Doctor with key role in abortion rights battle dies in Sarasota

Monday

Dec 30, 2013 at 10:23 PM

By ROBERT D. McFADDENThe New York Times

Dr. Kenneth C. Edelin, a Boston physician whose 1975 manslaughter conviction for performing a legal abortion was overturned on appeal in a landmark test of medical, legal, religious and political questions surrounding abortion in the United States, died Monday in Sarasota. He was 74.

The cause was cancer, his family said.

Edelin, who lived in Sarasota and in Oak Bluffs, Mass., discontinued his medical practice some years ago and retired from teaching in 2006.

He was the author of many articles on the prevention of teenage pregnancy and the danger of substance abuse during pregnancy.

Edelin held a medical residency at Boston City Hospital from 1971 to 1974.

He became the hospital's first black chief resident in obstetrics and gynecology in 1973.

Two years after the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision legalized abortion in 1973, Edelin, then 35 and a resident in obstetrics and gynecology, became the focus of a roiling national debate over crucial issues that had been left unresolved by the justices:

When does life begin? Does an aborted fetus have rights? And what are a doctor's often-contradictory duties to the fetus and its mother?

Edelin was charged with causing the death of the fetus of an unwed 17-year-old during an elective abortion in her sixth month of pregnancy.

In a six-week trial in Boston that explored uncharted legal ground and made headlines across the country, Edelin, who was black, was vilified as a baby-killer and defended as a victim of racial and religious prejudice being tried for an action that had never been defined as a crime: killing a fetus that may or may not have been a “person,” and whose rights had never been specified by law.

The abortion, which took place in 1973, began as a routine procedure: the injection of a saline solution that usually causes uterine contractions and the expulsion of the fetus. But several tries were unsuccessful, and Edelin completed the abortion by a surgical procedure known as a hysterotomy — making a small incision in the uterus, like a cesarean section, and detaching the fetus from the placental wall by hand.

Prosecutors did not contest the legality of the abortion — Roe v. Wade had struck down anti-abortion laws in most states, including Massachusetts — but argued that Edelin, after ending the pregnancy, had deprived “a baby boy” of life-sustaining oxygen while it was still in the womb “being born.” A photo of the dead fetus preserved in formaldehyde was shown to the jurors, and some said they were “shaken” by it.

The defense called the photo inflammatory and objected repeatedly to the prosecution's use of “fetus” and “baby” as interchangeable terms in a case it said was being politicized. Medical experts testified for the defense that the fetus, estimated to be 24 weeks old, was not viable enough to have survived outside the womb. Edelin's lawyers contended that no “person” had even existed, let alone died.

But the all-white 12-member jury, which included nine men and 10 Roman Catholics, convicted Edelin of manslaughter. Some jurors said later that the photo of the dead fetus, whose face, they said, looked distorted as if in pain, had been decisive in their decision to vote guilty. An alternate juror also said after the verdict that jurors had made racial slurs against Edelin “more than once” before closing arguments.

The presiding judge, who had instructed the jury that it could convict only if it believed that the fetus was a viable person and that the doctor had acted recklessly, sentenced Edelin to one year of probation, although he could have imposed a maximum of 20 years in prison. Edelin kept his medical license and continued to practice at Boston City Hospital.

Eden's experience led to his lifelong battle for reproductive and civil rights.

In an interview with the Herald-Tribune in 2007, he said, “Those of us who provide abortions understand through our life's experiences that life is not just yes or no, black or white, up or down, right or wrong, life or not life, death or not death.

“In these difficult dilemmas, I believe that the decision to have or not have an abortion should be left up to the individual woman, and to let her arrive at that decision because only she knows all of the facets of her life's circumstances. Her moral position is just as valid as the next person's.”

Edelin's conviction was hailed as a victory by anti-abortion groups and the Catholic hierarchy, which had long contended that life was sacred and began at conception. But it shocked and dismayed advocates of women's rights.

The appellate court held that a doctor could commit manslaughter only by ending the life of a fetus that was definitely alive outside the woman's body. It rejected the prosecution theory that the fetus might have been alive in the uterus after being separated from the uterine wall, and was thus a “person” for purposes of the manslaughter law.

The ruling also clarified the definition of “life,” saying that it meant having heartbeats and respiration — more than “several transient cardiac transactions” and more than “fleeting respiratory efforts or gasps.”

Edelin was propelled to fame by the case. He was named to prestigious posts in national health and human rights organizations, and went on to a successful medical and teaching career.

He was chairman of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America from 1989 to 1992, and a director of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. His case was the subject of a 1978 book, “The Baby in the Bottle,” by William A. Nolen.

In 2007 he published a memoir, “Broken Justice: A True Story of Race, Sex and Revenge in a Boston Courtroom.”